The Dip, Revisited

For all of you that like Seth Godin and his thoughts, The Dip is one of his bestselling books, talking basically about when it's time to quit something you are doing...or stick with it until you make it.

Some excerpts (paraphrased) from his book:

• The famous phrase, "winners don't quit", is jut wrong.
• Winners quit, the right things, at the right time, all the time.
• Quit the wrong stuff, stick to the right stuff.  Have the guts to do just this.

If you want a short audio introduction of the Dip, listen here.

Jim Collins has some thoughts along these lines too, with his New Year's Resolution Stop Doing List, where he advice readers to stop doing stop that make you lose focus on what you really want, as time for all of us is  the scarcest resource and limited.

So, how good are you at quitting?   Are you focusing on the right things?

You're Not Special

We have all heard famous high school and graduation commencement addresses, and some become internet phenomenons such as Steve Jobs'  "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish".   It's difficult to find a really inspiring graduation speech, isn't it?

David McCullough, an English teacher at Wellesley High School recently gave an inspiring speech to the summer high school graduates.  In his speech, titled "you are not special", David suggests that with so many people in the world with your same qualifications, we are all basically a commodity, regardless of the Lake Wobegon effect.   It all boils down to how much you care, and if that inspirations follows you for a long enough time, to get over the the Dip.

Are you still a commodity?  How many people are knocking on your door, begging you to work for them?

The Executive and The Consultant

For all of us who have been both independent consultants and employees, the Deming impersonator Mike Micklewright explains the difference between both roles very clearly.

For some of us, the ever lasting conflict between security (having a stable job) and satisfaction (attempting to solve problems in a wide variety of industries) is not easy to break.   Some find other income generating activities, others work as internal consultants for companies, others find jobs as consultants.  Having a job also does not guarantee stability, and can sometimes make your mind "dormant", as you become used to a job's procedures and processes.

The key is to never lose the "consultant mindset", regardless of what you do for a living.    Look at things from a higher perspective.  Always think and make decisions as if you were the owner of the company.   Constantly read about new things, share, learn.  Experiment, Learn, Experiment again. Tap into the wisdom of crowds.  Ask why constantly.  Give yourself time to reflect and think.

We all have a consultant mindset.  How often do you use it?

The Constanza Principle

There is a famous Seinfeld Episode where George Constanza starts doing the opposite of what his inner mind suggested.   After adopting his contrarian view on life, Constanza starts being very succesful in most of his endeavors.

Now, we all now the "lizard brain" or amygdala is there since evolutionary times to protect you from danger and to protect your family...but every once and again it may be good to stop listening to it, as hyenas and other dangers are not as common as before.

How often do you listen to your lizard brain?   What if you said yes, instead of no?

Standing On The Shoulders of Giants

This week I am at the yearly TOC ICO in Chicago, understanding the latest development in Theory of Constraints and meeting good friends and colleagues. It will be the first conference without Eli Goldratt, and the conference theme has been based on one of Eli's last ideas, which is based on the famous Newton quote:  "If I haven been further it has been because I have been standing on the Shoulders of Giants".   

Last year, Eli G developed a process to help TOC practitioners to improve the current body of knowledge.    The basic (summarized) version is the following:

1.  Identify a Giant, or a current solution that you want to expand on
2.  Identify the Area Not Addressed by The Giant, or the new area you want to expand the solution into
3. Get on the Shoulders, using previous effective concepts that have worked well in the past
4.  Identify the Conceptual Difference, or have the courage to identify "inconsistencies" between expected results and current results in the new area that you want to expand the solution into
5.  Identify the wrong assumption, or check which of the current assumptions that the solutions uses is not valid in the new area of application
6.   Conduct the full analysis, or do your due diligence

Although the process is a little difficult to grasp at first, the basic idea is that when you are trying to improve a particular solutions for a problem, try to find the instances where it is not working (untouched area), find why it is not working (wrong assumption) and expand the solution, using previous knowledge.

Improving and finding better solutions is not easy, but as Eli Goldratt used to say:

Do you want an easy life or a meaningful life?

The Power of Reflection

Reflection after the fact is not a popular practice among western management.   True, meetings to analyze results are held, but are root causes identified?  Or is it an exercise in finding the best excuse possible to explain results we don't understand?

Management gurus have implicitedly suggested reflection in their general approaches to continuous improvement.   Some examples could be (in bold the reflection part of the process):

• Deming, with the Plan-Do-Check-Act 
• John Boyd, with OODA, Observe, Orient, Design, Act
• Eli Goldratt, with the Five Focusing Steps, warning of inertia in Step 5.

Matt May recently described the reflection process that the former and very successful NY chief of police William Bratton used to apply with his team.  Initially developed by the US Army, the method is called an After Action Review (AAR), and some of the main principles are the following:

• It is mandatory and held after a key milestone, to check the effectiveness of a strategy, tactic or action
• It reviews both expected and unexpected effects that were observed in reality, regardless of if they were positive or negative in nature
• Three basic questions are asked to understand the results:  what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, how do we account for the differences.

The analysis of expectations versus results is ingrained in the Toyota Culture, as part of the kata that everyone must follow.   The late Eli Goldratt also placed great emphasis to understand the cause and effect of environments, and particulary when surprises, or gaps between expectations and results happened.   He used to tell the story of a fashion clothing manufacturer that sold all the collection they had launched early in the season.   Management was very excited as this had been a great success.   But then Eli reminded them that what it meant was they had run out of stock, and were unable to replenish as quickly as possible, and if this could have been done, sales would have been significantly larger.   This insight caused the management to reflect about these kinds of situations, and redefine their criterias of success.

So, do you reflect on what your actions and the gap between expectations and reality?  If so, what can you improve?

Math52, a Kickstarter Project for Learning Math

Who said math should always be a boring subject?  Enter Math 52, a project currently being funded in Kickstarter:

From Math's 52's pitch in Kickstarter:

"According to a Raytheon study, 61% of middle school students would rather take out the garbage than do their math homework, and teacher job satisfaction is at its lowest point in over twenty years. Students and teachers are hungry for something new...but not everyone knows what that looks like."

Math52 intention is to teach Math through weekly videos, using concepts that are easy to relate to:

• How far would you have to run to burn off a Big Mac?
• Do people with small feet pay too much for shoes?
• Is it ever a good idea to buy AppleCare...
• ...and what can this tell us about health insurance?

Although the platform used for teaching isn't very different than the other multiple online education alternatives, what's interesting is their way of approaching subjects, which on first hand seems to have behavioral economics related subjects and use a style similar to Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the authors of Freakonomics.

Do you have an idea you could launch using Kickstarter?  What are you waiting for?